The progressive ageing of European society is a fact. Growing number of people aged 60 plus seem to be lost in new, virtual reality. Communication between people, contact with public bodies , banking, access to culture – all these fields require more and more virtual competences. Senior Centers, libraries have been providing computer literacy courses yet they are mostly focusing on very basic skills. We have acknowledge lack of educational offer enabling the elderly to get familiar with innovative technologies significantly facilitating their everyday life. 60+ Virtual Culture is a project aimed at strategic partnership for the benefit of adult education created by four partner organizations from Czech Republic, France, Poland and Italy each of which has long lasting experience in helping people threatened with e-exclusion and the exclusion from cultural life , in particular with senior citizens. The fact, that educational offer does not follow rapidly changing needs of the ICT environment and newly developed tools often results from poor competences of trainers and people working with the elderly. The trainers being themselves aged 50+ and having outstanding skills in the area of teaching their peers are at the same time facing difficulties when it comes to technological novelties. On the other hand a large group of people working for the benefit of seniors are young with great and dynamic approach and knowledge in the field of ICT, who can immediately recognize new applications, tools and devices. Not many people are aware of the enlarging digital gap between generations. The youth and the seniors have a completely different approach to virtual reality and the attempts to educate seniors with the tools created to suit the young is both difficult and ineffective.The main objectives of the project are:-promoting lifelong learning and the benefits resulting from cross generational cooperation of the educators (Staff of partner organizations).-cooperation between partners, exchange of experience and good practices and the development of mutual direction of activities combating e-exclusion of the seniors. -implementation of innovative solutions for adult education facilitating access to culture and everyday life. -empowering key ICT competences among people with poor skills in the digital environment. The innovative solution applied in our project translates into creation of educational tandems : one trainer shall be at the age of 60+ having extensive experience in providing computer literacy courses while the other provides state-of-the art expertise in ICT (persons with no former experience in teaching adults, freshly graduated and unemployed will be preferred). The combination of the skills and experience of both young and elderly will contribute to building better rapport with e-excluded seniors while providing high level training quality. The project involves four teaching tandems one from each partner organization. Meanwhile the project creates local activities aimed at seniors (adults aged 60+) namely two workshop programs concerning empowerment of digital competences for the group of 80 people. In the course of the project the educators will implement innovative teaching methods, present new digital tools and devices, applications designated for the elderly enlarging their access to virtual reality. The educators will take part in various workshops, trainings and study visits during transnational activities, while visiting partner organizations. This will not only create an opportunity to exchange experience, good practices and improving transnational cooperation but also to develop new programs for local activities. The trainings will boost both digital and language competences of the educators and will improve the quality of teaching offer of partner organizations adjusting their teaching methods to the needs of older people. Apart from actual meetings, the communication and the exchange of good practices of educators will be perceived via digital tools an virtual conferences. Moreover, the seniors from each partner organizations will have a chance to meet virtually on the regular basis in order to exchange experience and to participate in cultural events. The emphasis on the necessity of using ICT shall be put during accessing culture in the area of residence and in breaking barriers through innovative digital solutions. Our aim is to enable seniors to provide their peers with their cultural experiences via digital platforms and to teach them to visit virtual museums and galleries and to be able to present their cultural background on the Internet. The practice of mutual participation in cultural events of participants from different countries will help braking common barriers faced by the elderly such as communication problems(hearing and eyesight issues),financial barriers (thanks to group discounts) as well as geographical and physical barriers (commuting together,
60+VirtualCulture was an international initiative in which 4 partner organizations of similar background in informal education, including education of seniors, from Wroclaw, Poland (ŻÓŁTY PARASOL), Paris, France (ESENIORS) , Prague, Czech Republic (GLAFKA) and Reggio di Calabria, Italy (INOVAMENTIS) have worked together to improve and optimize educational offer for erderly conserning their digital competences within the context of culture accessibility. The process of optimization has been developed in two stages. First, each organization appointed one teaching tandem (young ICT educator and one experienced senior (50+) educator) who took part in 3 Joint Staff Trainings , during which based on exchanged practices and knowledge, an educational model for local senior centers or libraries had been developed. Therefore, an innovative offer of ICT courses for seniors aiming at encouraging older people to participate in culture resources and cultural events using new technologies (e.g. accessing e-biooks, audio-books, visiting virtual museums, buying tickets online, creating and uploading content etc. ) was created. Simultanously so created teaching program was implemented, tested and adjusted during two cycles of ICT workshops for seniors in each country. The teaching tandems provided during the project a total of 198 hours of workshops for 105 seniors in four countries. Additionally, from among the participants of workshops 8 Digital Ambasadors were selected – people at the age of 60+ whose leadership and digital competences enabled us to include them into dissemination process and in some cases into the process of supporting the trainers in the teaching processes (they are now assisting he educators in further ICT courses for seniors) both during and after the termination of project activities. Digital Ambasadors, together with trainers and coordinators took part in Transnational Project meeting organized for the final part of the project in Wroclaw, Poland. The meeting was an occasion to invite wider audience to discuss the quality of ICT courses offered for seniors in local communities. It is worth saying that over 20 organizations from 4 sectors (science-business-NGO-authorities) were informally involved in the project. Excellent feedback from the participants of local works hops (100% “excellent” and “very good” responses for the question of quality and relevance of provided workshops) as well as local communities (project blog run by Digital Ambasador form Poland noted over 8 thousand visits) resulted in the decision of educators in Wroclaw to prepare and provide additional workshops for 22 persons teaching seniors ICT (including teaching staff from Public Library in Wrocław and Wroclaw’s Senior Centre). Moreover, due to dissemination processes the coordinating organization has received a declaration from local authorities (Municipality of Wroclaw) to provide financial means for further educational trainings for other people working as trainers in ICT courses for senior citizens in Wroclaw. Also, partner organizations from France and Czech republic declare that they are and will include teaching program created during the project into their everyday business , the organization from Italy is now with a great assistance of their Digital Ambassadors, creating senior community to which they would like to address the results of the project in the future. Taking into account unswerving interest of seniors who are willing to participate in further ICT courses and the involvement of several entities and institutions in the idea of improving educational offer for the elderly enables us to believe that the effects of 60+VirtualCulture will be long lasting and that they will reach much more beneficiaries in the future. Coordinating and participating organizations have agreed that they are ready for new challenges and are willing to continue their partnership by applying in Erasmus+ next year.